Space Mission
Mercury Programme, 21 Jan 1960
Photographer
Nasa
Photo Description
Vintage gelatin silver print on fibre-based paper, 20.5 x 25.5 cm (8 x 10 in), BLACK NUMBERED NASA L-62-934, with cropping marks and press captions affixed to verso
Essay
Miss Sam was one of many rhesus monkeys used to gather biomedical data on how a living organism, similar to a human, copes with space flights. Miss Sam was launched in a Mercury capsule on a Little Joe booster in January 1960 with that very objective. She survived her 8 minute 35 second flight to an altitude of 15 miles.